


Memories of someone else

by Pearlislove



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bill & her mum, Bittersweet, Gen, Memories, The Doctor & his granddaughter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 19:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11630229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlislove/pseuds/Pearlislove
Summary: Sometimes, when Bill is with The Doctor, she remebers things that she never did. Memories that are not hers flickers through her brain, and she experience feelings that are not her own.She doesn't tell The Doctor. She keeps it to herself,  telling herself it's nothing, but it's really bot true, is it?





	Memories of someone else

**Author's Note:**

> Just another spin of the 'Bill is the spawn of Susan' wheel

It just happens sometimes.   
  
When they’re walking about on some strange planet and she decides to grab his hand and lean on his shoulder.   
  
Or when she can tell he's had a rough night - most definitely giving Nardole a hard time as well - and decides to hug him for no reason whatsoever.   
  
It also happens when they're making chips and drinking tea in the school kitchen.   
  
Or when they're in the TARDIS kitchen, and for once The Doctor's cooking because only he knows how to work the kitchen.   
  
But it's nothing special, not really.   
  
It's like remnants of old memories passing through her head, reminding her of situations just like the one she happens to be in at the moment.   
  
Except they are not her memories.   
  
She is not the one leaning her head on the older man's shoulder, it's a much younger girl with shorter hair. And it's not The Doctor she is leaning against, either, because he's much older and his hair is whiter.   
  
It's not she who's hugging him after upsetting Nardole, it's a little girl trying to calm her grandfather down after upsetting her Science teacher by mistake for the thousandth time.    
  
He doesn't mean it but he can't get it right.   
  
The Doctor -  _ the other Doctor  _ \- has taken the little girl to a planet in the furthest reaches of the galaxy to see how the most exquisite chips to ever have existed was made. Only it doesn't work that way, and suddenly there's Daleks and a lot of running and then she's back with her Doctor again in the school kitchen and her own chips are ready to be eaten.

 

She doesn’t know what happened inbetween.   
  
She doesn’t tell The Doctor. She doesn’t tell The Doctor that as he works his alien chips machine she can see herself doing the same, through the eyes of a girl not her at all, a brown haired couple in sixties clothing that she does not know waiting for her to serve them food the same way she does with The Doctor.   
  
It just doesn't seem that important, or so she tells herself.   
  
Only one day, The Doctor is telling her of how Time Lords operate largely on a telepathic, subconscious level. And if they're good, they can share things like memories and feelings with each other, sometimes dating centuries back in their blood lines - each bloodline having  a sort of hivemind within their brain connecting them to memories not belonging strictly to them, but to their father, aunt or cousin for example.    
  
It catches Bill's interest, because it makes her think if the reminiscences of old memories that are not hers which keeps haunting her, and she wonders, if the Doctor has been projecting them in her brain when they're together.   
  
If maybe, she has been watching him as he used to be with his family - provided, of course, that he had one - through the eyes of someone he used to know. It makes her guts clench with unease, but she needs to know.   
  
So she raise her hand, and when he lets her answer she smile. "Is that why I sometimes  remember being with someone that is you but doesn't look like you, being someone that definitely not me?" She pause, studying him. His eyes are wide in shock and his face is paler than it's ever been before. It scares her, but she doesn’t dare to stop, and instead she quickly continues. "I can tell I'm this white teenage girl who likes to hang around some old man, which is you, by the way, and a couple that act like they're from the sixties. I was just wondering if...if you've been projecting these memories on my brain accidently." She smiles innocently, and The Doctor frowns.   
  
He still look scared. Moments pass, filled with nothing but awkward silence as The Doctor seems to struggle to regain his composure. Finally, he straightens his back and nods in her direction. "Yes. It was a mistake, I didn’t think your brain would be able to pick up on it. Won't happen again." Without another word, he turns back to the chalkboard, erasing all that he has written and quickly starting to draw something instead. She can tell he wants her to drop it, and so she does, but she doesn’t forget i   
  
Because no matter what The Doctor said, the Memories kept filtering through her brain. Not just those spent with The Doctor, but the little girl over the course of her entire life, growing up and raising children with a man she loved. There was a sadness over those memories, and sometimes Bill wanted to ask The Doctor why, but she was scared to scare him. It had been Obvious from the get go that The Doctor was worried for what she saw. That he didn’t  _ want  _ her to see these memories.

 

She didn’t understand. 

 

Not until she showed up hand in hand with Heather in front of The Doctor and is suddenly hit with the strongest memory yet.

 

The girl, hand in hand with a boy, watching the TARDIS dematerialising, The Doctor extracting himself from her life for seemingly forever.

 

A girls saying goodbye to her grandfather.

 

Her mother being pushed to make a decision she wasn’t ready to make, yet could never find it in herself to regret.

 

And then, all that was left, a faint promise. 

 

“One day, I shall come back”

 

She understood. She understood, at last, and it felt like a relief to have the truth of what she saw before her.

  
And so she left, leading Heather by the hand out the door, promising that one day she would come back, and actually meaning it.


End file.
